Setting Your Plate :)

Hello Friends!!

So I know it has been awhile since my last post, but in my defense I just got a new laptop for Christmas!! Therefore we are set for a while now...baller! Christmas is almost here, which means tons of time with family and being at home. This has also led to much prayer and learning more about the God that I want to serve so badly. After a lot of thought, I really wanted to write down what has been laid on my heart and that is the concept of “Setting Your Plate”. Not the kind where you pile onto your plate as much scrumptious food as you can on Christmas day but rather laying a foundation with God and feasting of the Word…Yeah, deep stuff, I know J

Over a year ago, the semester before I got elected to National Office, I had already received the nomination from Texas and I had the grand idea that I would be one step ahead of God. So I applied to be a counselor at a Christian camp ‘just in case’ the whole national officer thing didn’t work out.  When I showed up for the interview, I sat down with the lady and we just started talking about life. The more we talked, the more lessons I learned from her and she introduced me to the whole concept of setting your plate. She explained to me how important it is to take time to feast on the greatness that is the word of God and let it speak TO you so that it may speak THROUGH you to others. We closed in prayer and I left not fully realizing how important that tid bit of information really is.

Trust me, God will find you no matter where you are but shouldn’t I be working to find him just as much?

Philippians 4:4-7  Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.  Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Back in February, my teammates and I had the chance to travel to Japan!! Talk about awesomeness. We had the chance to stay with host families, eat sushi, see temples and other marvelous Japanese wonders. Now I’m a pretty happy person, but at this point I had just been struggling with some internal things and I didn’t even realize how much I needed to be pursuing God more. I had prayed that God would just help me to find him and how I could just serve him more. One of the last days we were in Japan, we were walking down this road that just had hundreds and hundreds of shops… I was just beboppin along when I for some reason looked over to my left and get this…take a breath…the name of the store was “RANDA”!!!!! Now keep in mind that Randa is NOT a common name, I never find it anywhere or printed on anything. I once typed into this program that said what your names means and it came back as non-applicable. Which is completely good but it made this store stand out all the more, the whole store was hot pink (my favorite color) and I was jazzed how God works.   Lesson- Don’t ever think that God won’t find a way to reach you, even if you are some random country where you don’t know a single soul, the language or really where exactly God is.

“I love those who love me,
   and those who seek me find me” Proverbs 8:17

If God can find me in a backstreet full of thousands people in a foreign country, why can’t I do more to seek him out myself?

Well I can, I can work more to set my plate every day and live in his word. About a month ago, I started a reading plan that would allow me to read the Bible in 90 days. It’s been incredible and I find myself looking forward to it every morning because it’s time for me and God and to help me understand how I can love him more. I’ve learned that I can set my plate every day through this set aside time and no matter where I am, where I’m traveling or even what country I’m in. I can find God just as he has loved me enough to find me…how beautiful is that J I understand in how busy life is and how we get caught up in our everyday lives. I’ll be the first to admit that it gets hard, but God first loved me so the least I can do is “set my plate” every day with a foundation for Him whether that is through prayer, reading or just loving.

God is Sovereign.

Loving God :)

Hello Friends!!

Wow, a blog? How exciting! Now I must admit that I put a lot of thought into starting this, you see a few weeks ago I attended a go missions conference at Breakaway (a worship service at Texas A&M) and I got to thinking how blessed my life was and there is no reason that I should not be able to share the lessons that God continues to teach me. Especially within the past year I have seen growth in myself and most importantly in my relationship with the Lord. I have learned how much more I desire to grow in my faith and because of that I am not always awakened to what he is showing me (hence the name of this blog) so I started to write down things that happen which I like to call "Jesus moments"and my prayer is that we can continue to REALLY see God in everything, everywhere and in everyone. That being said, the purpose of this is for me to just to blog about the good Lord and some great works I have seen....

LOVE.

Now that is a word! Back in September I got the chance to visit my grandparents  in Abilene, TX for labor day weekend which meant that I would be flying out of this quaint town to head back up to Indy because we were already preparing for the big convention. Now Abilene is not the biggest of airports so when I got there I found out that my flight was delayed about 20 minutes, which is not a big deal, except that meant I would miss my connection in Dallas which then meant that I had to spend 6 hours milling around the airport waiting on the last flight out to Indy that night. So being the adventurous type I decided to spend that 6 hours exploring the Dallas airport! I rode the tram to all the different concourses, made a few new friends and basically walked around until I came across this wall that had the most amazing sign I had ever seen, all it said was "Love God. Love People"

As soon as I read it, I just had to write it down...which got me to thinking about what sincere love really looks like. The most beautiful and probably most well known passage in the Bible is John 3:16  "For God so LOVED the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." Wow!! Now that is some real love and if God could look at me and the sinner that I am and still send his son to die for me then why would I not want to love people as he does.  So what are some things that we have control over that will allow us to LOVE others more and ultimately LOVE God more?
Here are just a few simple things that I wrote down:

-Always answer/quickly respond to phone calls and text messages
-Put others wants and needs before myself
-Continuously off to the "rough" jobs
-Ask others more about themselves
-write letters!!! :)

Once I saw this concept of loving people and loving God, I started to notice all the people around me that truly live that on a day to day basis. For starters, my national officer teammates are 5 people who truly love others. I watched them for a year and no matter what without fail, they made sure I knew how loved I was. I have a friend that coaches high school football and it was amazing to see how he just poured out into those young men. I watched on a plane later that day as this gentleman who didn't speak any english served this younger girl by puttin up her luggage in the overhead compartment and taking it down once we landed while having a smile the whole time. Now that is how we love people which brings us closer to God.

 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.- 1Peter 4:8

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. ¹⁰ Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. ¹¹ Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.- Romans 12:9-11

¹⁹ We love because he first loved us. ²⁰ Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. -1 John 4:19-20

The Bibe continuously shows us how much God loves us and it just makes my heart all warm and smiles to know how great God is! Loving others is something I want to strive for every day and I pray for God to let us love as he does :)